Survivor: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
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Book Reviews of Survivor: A Novel
Book Review: Literary Shock and Awe
Summary: 4 Stars
I was taught by the nuns that baptism is a sacrament that leaves an indelible mark on one's soul. If I went to heaven, Sister Innocentia (real name) told me, my indelible mark would shine like a sun. If I went to hell, that mark would burn like fire for eternity. Chuck Palahniuk's novel Survivor is not a sacrament, but it IS a baptism by fire, and it does indeed leave an indelible mark upon your soul, a mark that will scorch for some time after you've finished the several hundred page long trip through the hell of cult survivor Tender Branson's life.
Survivor begins with protagonist Branson at an altitude of tens of thousands of feet in the air as sole occupant of a pilotless commercial jet, and ends with that same jet, each of its four engines having flamed out for lack of fuel, hitting the ground at terminal velocity. Readers: fasten seat belts, prepare for turbulence, grip armrests forcefully. Don't bother to pray.
Palahniuk may be this planet's master of transgressive literature. Anne Soukhanov, a journalist for The Atlantic Monthly, describes trangressive literature this way: A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge. Wikipedia goes on to say: "The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sex, violence, incest, pedophilia, and crime." Survivor raises the bar for transgressive literature high. Very high.
Whether you belong to a book club that enjoys donnybrook literary discussions, or tend towards more solitary mental gymnastics, Survivor is replete with raw material that will suit your purpose. How are we to take Fertility Hollis, a waif with a gift for both phone sex and unerring prophecy? When you know exactly what the future holds, what is it that you crave most? Is religion ALWAYS a tool of abuse? Does Tender Branson truly merge his atoms with Australian dirt in a 200+ MPH collision? I only know the answer to one of these questions. Take pleasure in coming to your own conclusions.
I savor meals that consist of exotic foods, raw fish, nearly raw meat, and enough spice to make my nose run and my eyes water. The price I pay for such meals is a rumbling stomach, heartburn, and overly vivid dreams the night after the meal. Survivor had the same effect on me. Bon Appetit!
Book Review: Same thing as Fight Club, different premise
Summary: 2 Stars
How disappointed I am to realize only 20 or 30 pages into the book that Survivor is a cookie-cutter version of Fight club with a different premise. Let's look at the basics:
Main character of each, a quirky, nihilistic anti-hero whom you develop an odd sympathy for.
(sort-of) Antagonist -- Tyler Durden/Adam Branson -- character that the protagonist can't live with or without.
"Love" interest - Marla/Fertility, women whose weird personas heavily influence the protagonist's life and the unfolding of events. They, along with the antagonist, force the main character into a strange situation he wouldn't otherwise be in.
In both Fight Club and Survivor, the protagonist spends an awful amount of time explaining facts on how-to's and other trivial matters. This is what annoyed me the most with Survivor -- Chuck, you already did this extensively in Fight Club. I didn't care when I read about how to thread a film projector (though I just went with the flow) and I certainly don't care how to get blood stains out of a carpet.
Any there's plenty of prose style that's similar between the two. It gets old fast. It get annoying fast.
Enough comparison. Let's talk about the story itself. I think the basic idea is great. But then he throws in a half-baked twist every thirty pages. And these things come in out of nowhere. One minute Tender's a pawn cleaning houses, two (short) chapters later he's the most popular man in the country. Things enter the story almost without precedent. Here, you can really see how he is TRYING too hard. And you will not get a real sense of anything beyond him cleaning the house. I found it hard to believe that Tender was a media mongol. I was reading the words, but I couldn't feel them. And the ending was the most arbitrary I've ever read in a novel. You can tell Chuck was running out of steam. I won't spoil anything about it.
Reading Survivor is like watching an ant colony construct a nest. You look at it from far above and you visualize the overall blueprint and result of everything, but it whizzes by so fast and so removed from your point of view, you can see what the ants built but you didn't experience anything.
I've been told by multiple people that all his books are similar, not in basic story premise but in other smaller characteristics, much like I explained above. I, therefore, will probably never read another of his books because, in the parlance of Palahniuk, they read like Survivor reads like Fight Club reads like... I suggest reading Fight Club and stopping there. You're not missing out on anything beyond that.
Book Review: Dark, disturbing, humorous, engaging
Summary: 5 Stars
Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor" takes the reader into the world of Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a suicide cult. As the book opens, Branson, the narrator, has hijacked a Boeing 747 with the intention of crashing it, with himself on board, into the Australian outback. Having emptied the plane of passengers, he proceeds to tell his account of his life - ostensibly as it 'really happened' - into the flight recorder, from his childhood under the repressive authority of the Creedish Church to being propelled years later to media stardom as the last survivor.
The first thing that the reader will notice is that the book begins with Chapter 47 on page 289 and counts its way down to Chapter 1 and page 1 at the end, a device which serves to constantly remind the reader that Branson's last minutes are ticking away even as he retells his story, lending an air of foreboding to his words. Palahniuk also has Branson constantly backtrack upon himself in a way which mimics such a stream-of-consciousness dictation. The writing style throughout is informal and extremely sketchy as regards description. Even the names of key characters are never revealed - including the government caseworker appointed to prevent Tender from following the rest of his cult members into suicide, and the agent who later drives him to stardom. On the other hand, by having Tender talk at great length about apparently unimportant and superfluous things such as how to correctly eat a lobster, Palahniuk gives us a sense of Tender's quirky and disturbed nature, almost as if he exists slightly out of tune with reality.
This is a book which tackles big themes: birth and death, murder and suicide, free will and determinism, belief and unbelief, truth and falsehood. Palahniuk conjures up a vividly dystopian and disturbing world, which only grows darker as Tender is drawn within the media culture - a culture which proves every bit as restrictive, false, twisted and soul-destroying as the Creedish society that he used to belong to. What really engages the reader, however, is the strength of the main characters: firstly Tender, who struggles throughout the story to find meaning in his life and to become truly free; and secondly his friend Fertility Hollis, who claims to be able to see the future and acts as Tender's guide. It is their relationship which forms the backbone of the story right up until its climax in the final chapter.
Pacy, inventive, often funny, "Survivor" is a fine (though dark) book, and one that I can easily recommend.
Book Review: Survivor- A great thought-provoking read
Summary: 5 Stars
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk vividly describes the bitter reality of our material and media centered culture. This novel involves a member of a suicidal cult who decides to try to live his life to the fullest. His struggles are shown as he goes through rungs of society from a maid, to a star, to a wrongly accused murderer.
Chuck Palahniuk's style of writing is magnificent. He writes the truth, puts on paper what could really happen through abstract ideas. It seems as if you are the main character in his books as he uses little or no quotation marks for the quotes of the main characters. Chuck describes everything the main character sees, feels, and does. This book would not be as strong without Chuck's unique writing style.
While reading this book, I thought a lot about the feelings and goals of the average American. Set in modern time, through the eyes of someone inexperienced with the beliefs of most Americans, this book shows that how you act is based purely on what you learn. The setting of this fiction will trap you in and force you to think about how the issues described in the book can be relevant in the real world, as it all seems so real even with such an absurd storyline. I now believe that people can be convinced to do anything if they believe it is right, I can understand if people from other countries see American society as corrupt and painful. There is no right or wrong in the universe, there is only what is taught. This book made me think about many issues that I otherwise would never have even noticed existed.
The main character of Survivor, Tender Branson, was not meant to be a character for the reader to relate to. Tender shows the exact opposite of the average American. He transforms from an extreme religious radical into a media sensation turned fugitive. Looking through Tender's eyes is like trying to see the world in a completely different way. You might not connect with what Tender believes, but by the end of the book you will understand and see his side of the world. You might learn that you can actually relate to someone even if he seems vastly different from you. Tender is just a rebel who is trying to make the best out of his life in the world while attempting to stay true to how he was raised, what that he believes in.
If you are interested in a thought-provoking, interesting book by a great author, you should add Survivor to your list.
Book Review: "Testing, testing, one, two, three."
Summary: 5 Stars
Tender Branson, the main character of Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor," is on an airplane that is only six or seven hours away from crashing into the Australian outback. But Tender isn't upset, scared, or worried. In fact, after he hijacked the plane, he made sure the pilot and passengers got off safely before he left himself alone in the cockpit, his death only a few hours away. Tender is calmly unfolding his life story to the flight recorder, or "black box," of Flight 2039. Why would anyone care about this man's life story? Well, as it turns out, Tender Branson has recently become a celebrity, due to his being the last surviving member of the "Creedish Death Cult." Through Tender's narration, we learn all of the details of his life, from his youth in the cult to his rise to fame as a religious celebrity.
"Survivor" begins on the last page and ends on page 1, simultaneously taking place on the plane, and on the events of Tender's life that led to this point. The way Palahniuk unfolds the events is not convoluted or confusing, yet is not traditional by any means. There are two different timelines interwoven in the story, yet they seem to be propelling forward together. Palahniuk's writing style leaves you wondering what will happen next, and as you read, you learn to expect the unexpected. Although the character of Tender is one that is in no way a hero or someone to look up to, you begin to care about what happens to him next, if only to find out what possessed him to hijack that plane. There are few main characters in "Survivor," yet they all play a very pivotal role in Tender's fate, and they are all interesting enough in their own right.
Though the issues in the novel are quite depressing and often deal with suicide, they are expressed with a certain amount of humor. Of course, the novel is quite bleak, but you will be hard pressed to stop reading. The beauty of "Survivor" is that it is unlike any other novel out there. Even when you think you know how this is all going to end, you will be in for yet another surprise.
This novel will change the way you read books in the future. The story is extremely original, as is the style in which it is written. After reading "Survivor," most novels will seem straightforward in comparison. I know that this book has changed the way I view literature. I hope it does the same for you.